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EU ready to provide Ukraine aid worth $15 billion

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Modified: March 5, 2014 at 4:46 pm •
Published: March 5, 2014

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is ready to give Ukraine 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in loans and grants over the coming years to help stabilize its economy, the head of the bloc's executive arm said Wednesday.

Anti-Yanukovych protesters warm themselves next to a fire in Kiev's Independence Square, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 5, 2014. Stepping back from the brink of war, Vladimir Putin talked tough but cooled tensions in the Ukraine crisis Tuesday, saying Russia has no intention "to fight the Ukrainian people" but reserves the right to use force. As the Russian president held court in his personal residence, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kiev's fledgling government and urged Putin to stand down. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The aid comes on top of $1 billion in energy subsidies the United States pledged Tuesday. It will help support Kiev while it negotiates a broad bailout program with the International Monetary Fund.

The EU package is "designed to assist a committed, inclusive and reforms-oriented government in rebuilding a stable and prosperous future for Ukraine," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

The aid will include 1.6 billion euros in loans and 1.4 billion euros in grants from the EU budget and at least 8 billion euros fresh credit from financial institutions run by or controlled by the EU and its member states, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The package foresees helping to modernize Ukraine's gas transit system and providing technical assistance ranging from judicial reform to assistance in preparing elections, the Commission said. The package also calls for steps to accelerate achieving visa-free travel for Ukrainians to the 28-nation bloc.

That measure, if approved, would go down particularly badly in Moscow, since Russia has sought visa-free travel to Europe for its citizen for years. Suspending discussions on that project are among the measures EU leaders will consider at an emergency meeting Thursday to punish Russia over its occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Coincidentally, the headline figure of $15 billion for the EU's aid package is the same amount that Russia was prepared to grant Ukraine in loans until the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted last month.